With this compilation film, György Pálfi pays tribute to the precious moments of movie history: It’s a feature-length mosaic weaving 400-ish clips into a single story. This film buff’s salmagundi is therefore fun to watch, but Pálfi is also slyly teasing the sameness of so many movie plots. It always comes down to Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back Again. And so a coherent Every-narrative can be spliced together from movies as different as The Sound of Music, Stalker, Star Trek—The Motion Picture, and Stranger Than Paradise, to pick one alphabetical run (the film’s website lists all the sources).
Pálfi is a Hungarian filmmaker of prodigious imagination; his lovable 2002 comedy Hukkle brought him to international attention, and his unlovable (but really kind of brilliant) 2006 satire Taxidermia established his talent for extremes. Final Cut came about after Hungary canceled a government subsidy for movie projects, leaving Pálfi stranded.